Sainz ‘thinking outside the box’ amid struggles with F1-75

Carlos Sainz has conceded that he is “having to think outside the box” as he continues to try and understand Ferrari’s F1-75 after another race-limiting error.

Sainz has trailed team-mate Charles Leclerc through the early stages of 2022 and has made several errors that have compromised his results.

Sainz held third in the early stages of the Spanish Grand Prix but spun on the approach to Turn 4 and dropped out of the top 10, before recovering to fourth.

He explained that “the car has been quite on a knife-edge in corner entry all weekend” and that a combination of dirty air following Max Verstappen and a gust of wind triggered the off.

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Expanding further on the issues Sainz said that he is “struggling quite a bit to drive this car and understand how to extract the maximum out of it.

“It’s giving me a whole new challenge in my Formula 1 career, and I’m having to think outside of the box, drive outside of the box and with this comes mistakes, it comes learning things that I’m having to learn, and I’m putting my head down to try and fight this and make it turn as soon as possible.

“I think you can see from the cameras and everywhere that I’m not there yet with the car compared to last year, that I’m not driving naturally, the car is a bit too pointy for my liking but that’s it, that’s the way it goes.

“You can either adapt yourself or can either bring your car a bit more to your liking.

“Anyway, these two things, they take time, and they take knowledge and experience, it takes mistakes and trial and error, and this is what I’m in the process now and what I’m going to try and correct as soon as possible.”

Sainz outlined that he has to try and learn from team-mate Leclerc, who was on course for a third win – from his fourth pole position – until a power unit failure.

“At the same time I have on my left a guy who is doing an excellent job like Charles is, with this car,” Sainz said.

“He’s driving at a very high level, he’s putting together super impressive lap times, an impressive way of driving and I can only admire and try and in some ways copy and in others try and put it a bit more in my liking to be faster.

“Sometimes it goes like this and as a driver you just need to go through a process and challenge yourself.”